Except for the Bones (30 page)

“—next, Preston?” she was asking. “Who’ll die next? Is it Bernhardt? Is he next?”

Bernhardt.

The faceless presence, suddenly the ultimate threat.

Bernhardt alive represented danger.

But Bernhardt dead could represent disaster. Because Millicent, when she learned of Bernhardt’s death, would go to Farnsworth. She would tell Farnsworth that Paul Cutler, attorney at law, officer of the court, father of Diane, had hired Bernhardt to come to the Cape.

And Farnsworth, that obscene, corrupted guardian of the law, would put in the call to Boston. Farnsworth would save his own oversize skin.

And then the jackals, always out there, would begin to circle. Reporters at their keyboards. Editors holding the presses.

“Millicent—” With the single word he tried to reach her, this one last time. “Millicent, I’ve—there’s something I’ve got to do. It’s—it’s about this, all this. Can I—I’ve got to—” He broke off, shook his head, began again: “Will you stay here, until I come back? Will you do that?”

Her face was expressionless now, as if hatred had frozen it forever.

An endless moment passed—and another, her eyes locked with his, a wordless, soundless struggle. Finally, very deliberately, she nodded.

Then, without speaking, she turned, went to the door, opened it, walked out of the room. Behind her, the door closed with a single click.

Instantly, he took his keys from his pocket, unlocked the desk, opened the right-hand top drawer—the drawer that held his revolver and ammunition, nothing else.

“A
SSUMING THAT YOU’RE TELLING
the truth,” Bernhardt said, “then if I were you, I’d make a deal.”

“Is that so?” Kane’s smile was mocking. “What kind of a deal would that be?”

“You’re telling me that you didn’t have any part in the girlfriend’s murder. Based on my information, I’d say that’s probably the truth.”

Watching the other man carefully, Kane made no reply. The living room of his apartment in the Sycamore Street house was tiny, furnished with one brown plastic sofa, a matching armchair and two straight-backed wooden chairs that badly needed refinishing. There were three lamps, each one with a skewed shade. Bernhardt sat in the center of the sofa, Kane sat in the armchair. Less than ten feet separated them.

“You also say you didn’t kill Jeff Weston. And when my associate saw you about to attack Diane, in San Francisco, you say you just wanted to talk to her. You say you were carrying a rolled-up newspaper, which Pau—which my associate thought was a club. Well—” Trying for a cheerfully objective cynicism, hoping to keep the other man off balance, Bernhardt shrugged affably. “Well, I’ve got to tell you, Kane, that I don’t believe you on either count.”

“Listen, Bernhardt, you—”

“According to Diane’s story,” Bernhardt cut in, “she and Jeff saw Daniels disposing of his blonde friend’s body. That connects the three incidents—the two murders and the attempted murder. Then there’s the MO in two of the incidents. A club. So I’ve got to figure that—”

“I’m not going to listen to any more of this shit, Bernhardt. We’ve been at this for an hour. And in about two minutes, I’m going to throw your ass out of here. I’m going to—”

“However,” Bernhardt went on, “neither one of those two incidents—the murder of Weston and the attempt on Diane’s life—are what this case is all about. You know that, and so do I. And, unless I’m very much mistaken, Farnsworth knows that, too. You’re a very little fish, Kane. But Daniels is a very big fish. Which, I believe, could give you a lot of leverage, if you’re smart.”

Kane’s eyes were smoldering. Beneath the T-shirt he wore, the muscles of his neck and shoulders were drawing tight. But he said nothing. Watchfully, he waited: the predator, gathering himself.

Surreptitiously, Bernhardt shifted slightly on the sofa, at the same time unbuttoning the corduroy jacket that concealed the Ruger, holstered beneath his belt on the left side. “What this case is all about,” Bernhardt said, “is the murder of that girl. Daniels’s blonde. That’s where it all starts. And I’m betting that Daniels called on you for help—hired you—after that murder was committed, after he’d buried the body. Isn’t that right?”

Now Kane’s icily mocking smile returned as he said, “You don’t expect me to answer that, do you?”

Bernhardt’s answering smile was cat-and-mouse cheerful as he said, “Let’s go back to the deal I was talking about. Let’s construct a hypothetical scenario. Let’s say that you look around, and you realize that you could be getting into real trouble. You decide you want to cut your losses, you want to get out. So what’s the best way to proceed? How do you protect yourself? If you make a deal with Farnsworth that’ll incriminate Daniels, how do you know Farnsworth’ll keep his word and go easy on you? The answer is, you don’t know. So you need a third person, for protection. A lawyer, let’s say. Except that a lawyer who’s good enough to help you is going to want a lot of money—up front. He’ll want twenty-five thousand, probably, just to get started. So let’s say you decide not to hire a lawyer. And let’s say Farnsworth is really starting to lean on you. What do you do? The way I see it, you’ve got three ways to go. You can hang tough, and hope Daniels doesn’t fall. Or else you can make a deal with Farnsworth, which I think would be pretty risky business.”

As he said it, Bernhardt saw something behind Kane’s clear gray eyes shift, saw the lines around his mouth tighten. Had Farnsworth already offered a deal to Kane?

“Which brings us to the third alternative.” Bernhardt smiled, spread his hands. “Me.”

Kane snorted contemptuously. “You?”

“You flew Daniels and his blonde girlfriend to the Cape the day before she died. You flew him back to New York the day after she died. You know her name. You can connect her to Daniels. If you’ll make a statement to that effect, and if you’ll testify that Daniels paid you to shut up both Jeff Weston and Diane Cutler—if you’ll do all that, and I add to it what I know, and I take the whole package to the state attorney in Boston, I can guarantee that he’ll make you a deal. He’d do anything to get your testimony.”

For the first time, Kane’s eyes shifted tentatively. “You wouldn’t go to Farnsworth?”

Promptly, Bernhardt shook his head. “No way. I don’t trust him.”

For a long, speculative moment Kane made no reply as his gaze wandered thoughtfully away. This, Bernhardt knew, was the decisive moment, make-or-break time. Was Kane about to give in? So easily? So quickly? Moments ago, he’d been hostile, belligerent. What unknown nerve had Bernhardt pressed? Was it something to do with Farnsworth?

Finally, speculatively, Kane said, “What if I can do all that—tell you all that? What’ve you got to go with it?”

“I’ve got what Diane told me. She laid out the whole thing, what she and Jeff saw, and when they saw it.”

“She knew where the body’s buried, then.”

Bernhardt nodded.

“And she told you.”

“Yes.”

“Where’d she say it was buried?”

“Ah-ah—” Bernhardt raised an admonishing forefinger. “First you. Then me.”

Now Kane’s belligerence was fading, replaced by transparent calculation. Holding eye contact, boring in, everything at risk now, he said, “Her name was Carolyn Estes. She lived in Manhattan. Greenwich Village. But she’s not—she wasn’t—in the book.”

Aware that he was exhaling, a spontaneous release of tension, Bernhardt nodded. “Okay. Good. Now I’ve got something I can take to Boston. Tomorrow. First thing tomorrow. How do you spell her last name?”

“Wait. I gave you something. What about me? What’ve you got for me? You know where she’s buried. Where is it?”

Aware that he was gambling against long odds, aware that a vital piece of the puzzle was still missing, Bernhardt spoke softly, reluctantly: “He buried her in the landfill. The one about five miles northeast of town. He took her there in his Cherokee, wrapped in a blanket, or a tarp. Sunday night. About midnight. He buried her himself.”

“The landfill …” Slowly, Kane nodded. When he spoke, it was in a different voice, an enigmatic voice: “Yeah …” He nodded again. “That’s right. The landfill …” He continued to hold Bernhardt’s eyes as he asked softly, “But where in the landfill? That’s the question.”

Watching the other man, conscious of unknown crosscurrents, a presence unseen, therefore dangerous, Bernhardt also spoke very softly: “Are you asking me?” A last definitive pause. “Or are you going to tell me?”

Kane smiled: a confident smile, subtly superior, gently mocking: “I can do better than that, Bernhardt. I can show you.”

H
E HEARD THE LATCH
click, saw the door open a cautious crack to reveal Bessie’s pale, pinched face. Then came the predictable exclamation: “Mr. Daniels. Why—” Then, fretfully agonized: “Just a minute, Mr. Daniels. Just a second.” The door closed, the night chain rattled, then the door opened to reveal Bessie Nichols, wrapped in a chenille robe. Her hair was in curlers, her eyes were round and anxious. Of all his domestic help, Bessie was the most loyal, the most dependable—and the mousiest.

“Mr. Daniels,” she repeated, anxious now. “Is anything wrong?”

He was ready with a reassuring smile. “Nothing’s wrong, Bessie. I’m just looking for Bruce. Something’s come up. Is he here?”

“Oh, Mr. Daniels—” Agitated, she spoke with deep regret: “You just missed him. Ten minutes, maybe even less, you missed him by. I was letting Foxy in for the night. Foxy, that’s my cat. And I saw Bruce leave.”

“But—” Daniels half turned toward the street. “His car—”

“He was with someone. A man.”

“A man? Who? Did you recognize the man?”

She frowned. “How do you mean? Do you mean did I know him, know his name? Because I don’t. But I recognized him from yesterday, when he came by looking for Bruce.”

“Can you describe him?”

“He was about forty, forty-five. Tall and skinny. Six foot, at least. He had those aviator glasses, I remember that, and a lot of hair and a long nose. He seemed to be dark-complected, too. Not Negro or Mexican, not like that. Just dark.”

“How was he dressed?”

“A light-colored sports jacket,” she answered promptly, “and no tie. And he walked kind of slouched, it seemed like. The way a lot of tall men walk.”

“Did they take his car, he and Bruce?”

She nodded. “Yes, sir.” She pointed toward the street. “The car was parked on the other side of the street, under that streetlight, so I got a real good look at it. And it was red. Small, too. A Japanese car, maybe.”

“You’re sure it was red.”

“Absolutely. Red. No question. And small.”

“Okay.” He nodded, stepped back, smiled. “Sorry to bother you, Bessie.”

“No bother at all, Mr. Daniels.”

“H
AVE YOU BEEN TO
the landfill?” Kane asked.

Behind the steering wheel of the Escort, Bernhardt nodded. “Certainly.”

“The whole thing is fenced. There’s only one entrance.”

“I know.”

“They’re building the approach to a bridge—a causeway, really—across a chain of saltwater ponds. It’ll relieve the congestion on Route Twenty-eight.” Kane pointed. “Turn right here.”

Bernhardt slowed, made the right-angle turn that put them on a narrow two-lane blacktop road leading north, away from Route 28. The blacktop road was deserted; the night sky was overcast. To the east, the lights of Hyannis were fading in the fog. Bernhardt glanced at Kane’s dimly defined profile, then returned his gaze to the road ahead. What could account for Kane’s abrupt turnabout, his sudden decision to cooperate? They’d talked for a little more than an hour. From the first, Kane had been hostile, defiant, sometimes belligerent. But then, when Bernhardt had said he’d deal with the state attorney, not Farnsworth, Kane had suddenly caved in, begun to cooperate.

Why? What had suddenly turned the tough, perpetually angry pilot around? Behind his street-fighter’s persona, was Kane scared?

Or was he pretending, faking it, running a scam? Once more, silently, Bernhardt glanced at the man beside him. Since they’d gotten into the car together, they hadn’t talked about the Estes murder; Daniels hadn’t been mentioned.

The landfill covered acres. The terrain changed with every dump-truck load, every bulldozer pass. A crew using probes could work for days before they found Carolyn Estes’s body. Perhaps weeks. Perhaps months.

Until an hour ago it had been Bernhardt’s belief, his working premise, that only the murderer knew the exact location of the grave. Only Daniels.

Yet, in minutes, Kane would point out the grave.

Signifying what?

In exchange for murdering Jeff Weston, had Kane demanded that Daniels point out the grave site? Somehow the scenario didn’t scan: the swaggering, bad-tempered pilot, dictating terms to Preston Daniels.

Was there another scenario? Was it possible that—

“There.” Kane pointed ahead. “Turn right. This is it.”

As, yes, Bernhardt recognized the sandy, rutted dirt road that led to the gates of the landfill, just over the next rise.

C
ROUCHED ON HIS KNEES
in the trough between two ridges of sand and cut grass, Farnsworth saw the Escort turn into the entrance of the landfill. Once inside, the car’s headlights went out as the small sedan slowed to a crawl, making its way along the narrow track compacted by the dump trucks on their daily rounds. In seconds, the Escort disappeared among the mounds of earth and debris outlined against the night sky: slabs of concrete and twisted claws of reinforcing rods and shards of broken pipe and splintered metal. Earlier in the day, the landfill’s foreman had told Farnsworth that, once, since July fifteenth, the trucks had been held while the bulldozers had come to level the site. Soon, the foreman said, the bulldozers would come again. Eventually the ready-mix concrete trucks would arrive—and Daniels’s secret would be safe.

Until now, safe.

D
RIVING SLOWLY IN SECOND
gear, lights out, Daniels brought the Cherokee up to the top of the last rise in the road just as—yes—the Escort turned into the landfill’s entrance and disappeared from view behind a hillock. Was this the beginning, the first incarnation of his worst fears, his most persistent nightmare: the body of Carolyn Estes, a worm-eaten cadaver, exhumed?